The Border Regions

After our abbey ruins double header Saturday, we ended up camping just south of Rievaulx Abbey at a real commercial “holiday park”. It was a zoo. Fortunately, we were able to camp off in a field with about 6 other tenters and it was nice and quiet there. Elsewhere there were literally hundreds of tents and trailers (caravans), with kids running around everywhere squirting water and making noise. Our corner of the campground was very peaceful.

The drive north in the morning was through some really quite attractive terrain – pretty much towards Darlington and north-west to Hexham, just south of Hadrian’s Wall. We found a campground within a few hundred meters of The Wall, hiked for a couple of hours along The Call and visited the site of one of the Roman castles (Chesters?) built back in the 2nd century. Quite interesting and almost 2000 years old. Hadrian’s Wall, for those who might have forgotten, marked the northern boundary of the Roman Empire in this part of the world. There is a walking path along the Wall that crosses England at this point and we enjoyed wandering along a couple of miles of it.

Our camping that night was very quiet but with the usual heavy dew in the morning. Nothing but the muttering of Roman ghosts to disturb our slumbers.

Our next day was a drive up towards the coast to Alnwick to resupply (where we apparently missed an interesting castle which we will have to visit on our way back south in a few days) and on to Lindisfarne Castle and Priory. The castle is relatively new by the standards of this country and stands on a rocky promontory out at the end of a sandy island that can be reached only a low tide. The Priory has been part of the religious culture on Holy Island for the usually expected centuries. Apparently the ruins of such places are favourites of mine.

Towards Berwick-upon-Tweed we found, after some driving back and forth, a very nice campsite out in the country almost on the Tweed River near the site of a 1820s suspension bridge connecting England and Scotland. I think it’s now called the Union Bridge and at the time was the longest suspension bridge in existence. It’s not that long – under 100 meters, I’d say – but it merited another of those “Weak Bridge” signs we’ve been seeing. We drove across it anyway in the morning. Fortunately, our car is small.

In the morning, we spent an hour or so walking around the walled city of Berwick-upon-Tweed where one of our neighbours from home grew up and then wandered our way along the coast into Edinburgh where we have accommodation for the next two nights.